Picture this: You’re part of a new project at your company with team members spread across different floors, different buildings, or even different cities. Excited to get started, you want to make sure that the team is able to communicate with each other seamlessly to get the project moving as fast as possible. You turn to email to get your messages across quickly, which is actually a huge mistake. Hours go by simply waiting for people to respond, even if it’s just for a quick update or short confirmation. Ultimately, email is slowing down the entire project.

Sound familiar?

Rapid communication among teams in any organization is crucial for success, yet today’s communication technology offerings seem to fall short when it comes to enterprise. And email has seen little innovation over the last decade, continuing instead to remain slow, asynchronous, and unsuitable for anything requiring speed.

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Although workplace chat tools is a nascent space, no one has been able to nail it for businesses.

Take for instance consumer-driven instant messengers like Skype, Google Hangouts, WhatsApp, and others. These apps make you share your personal IDs with colleagues, bosses, and clients, which is just not something everyone feels comfortable doing. Mixing your professional conversations with personal exchanges can be a recipe for disaster, and using different channels for different clients or work contacts can become confusing and oftentimes messy.

Another example of bad enterprise messaging is Microsoft Lync, a platform for unified enterprise communications. Few organizations can really use a messaging solution like this. It’s incredibly expensive for small and medium-sized businesses, and requires an IT taskforce to set it up effectively and maintain.

Alternative services like Yammer and SharePoint are available, but the problem is the rate of adoption on these services is extremely low. According to a report from Forrester, 54 percent of businesses said they do not see the level of adoption they expected, while 51 percent said users just don’t like the SharePoint experience. That’s not to say you shouldn’t check out the few enterprise-level services that are actually attempting to fix the problem of bad team-level communication.

A few forcing enterprise messaging to evolve

The enterprise messaging space has certainly evolved over the past few months, with new chat apps offering a myriad of solutions are working to fill the much-needed gap. One such app is Flock.co, a multi-platform messenger for teams and businesses with desktop and mobile clients. There’s also Slack, a power user-messaging software that provides various integrations that make it easy for software engineering teams to integrate with Github. Another worth mentioning is Cotap.

Easy to use with little to no IT support, these apps can be installed by anyone in the organization. Both Flock and Cotap include multi-platform support, too. Other features include synched conversations, group chat, auto populating company directories and chat usernames, secure conversations, file sharing, chat history, admin interfaces, and more.

Flock.co, Slack, Cotap, and other similar offerings provide a much required alternative to using personal messaging apps in the workplace and maintain the separation between your employees’ work and personal lives. With little to no cost and no IT staff to support, organizations that adopt this new wave of instant messaging solutions are finding them a handy replacement for email — and spending several hours a day using them while increasing efficiency through easier collaboration.

Unified communication apps can make a real impact for a business, not to mention considerably improve productivity of its workers. But as previously mentioned, the new wave of enterprise communication services have yet to reach critical mass among companies. It will, however, be interesting to see how this space plays out over the next few years, and I expect we’ll see some very interesting innovations going forward.

Bhavin Turakhia is the CEO of international calling service Ringo as well as a serial entrepreneur. He has founded and continues to run several successful businesses, including BigRock, Resellerclub, Logicboxes, and Radixregistry.com. He is passionate about the communications space, and envisions a world where high-quality communication is free for the masses.

]]>0The fractured state of enterprise messaging: Why can’t anyone get it right?Facebook kills 100 startups with new collaborative photo album featurehttp://venturebeat.com/2013/08/26/facebook-kills-100-startups-with-new-collaborative-photo-album-feature/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/26/facebook-kills-100-startups-with-new-collaborative-photo-album-feature/#commentsMon, 26 Aug 2013 19:26:20 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=802964This is massively convenient and tons of fun for the billion-plus users of Facebook. For entrepreneurs who've built photo-sharing apps, not so much. Let the carnage begin!
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So, you started an app for collaborative photo albums. You tried to tell us it was different because it was private, or centered around events or locations, or automatically identified friends’ faces.

Again and again, we warned y’all that Facebook, owner of all photos of people on the Internet and the most popular mobile photo app, was going to crush you eventually.

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To put it in simpler language, Facebook has launched shared photo albums. The feature was a hackathon project that a couple of engineers created.

Fun facts:

Albums have a limit of 200 photos

Privacy settings include public viewing, collaborators only, or friends of contributors

Album creators can delete or modify anyone’s photos

Contributors can only alter their own pics

Rollout begins today for English-speaking Facebook members in the United States.

Now, this is massively convenient and tons of fun for the billion-plus users of Facebook, from grandmas who want to collect photos from their 75th birthday parties to kids who want to build albums of their most recent soccer victories.

It’s not so fun for entrepreneurs. Apps and services like Cluster, Albumatic, Keepsy, Swirl, Flock, Kicksend, Kaptur, and dozens of others are destined for the dustbin of Internet history.

Of course, their founders will be spinning a bold David-and-Goliath yarn about how differentiated they are and how much their users love them and how optimistic they are about the future. But we’re deadpooling all of ’em, effective immediately.

Facebook is just too big to fail when it comes to normal people and photos. It works on every platform; it has more users than every country on Earth has citizens, save China and India; and the number of photos it’s collected already is unrivaled. Facebook has more photos of you and your friends than exist in your phone’s photo album, and there’s no way any standalone app can succeed in the face of those odds.

]]>1Facebook kills 100 startups with new collaborative photo album featureThe funniest Achievements and Trophies ever, part five: And the resthttp://venturebeat.com/2013/01/18/funniest-achievements-and-trophies-part-five/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/18/funniest-achievements-and-trophies-part-five/#commentsFri, 18 Jan 2013 19:00:31 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=603560For the fifth and final installment in our rundown of the most amusing virtual rewards, it's time to wrap this whole thing up with an eclectic mix of some of the unlockables that didn't quite fit into the other categories.
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Early in BioShock 2, you enter an amusement park in the underwater city of Rapture that is basically where founder Andrew Ryan had people send their kids so he could read to them from The Fountainhead. OK, it wasn’t literally that, but it was clearly a propaganda center disguised as a bunch of fun rides. It even had friendly animatronic versions of Ryan to greet the kids and not creep them out at all.

If you look behind the first Ryan-bot, who sits in a re-creation of the real guy’s office, you’ll find a replica of the golf club that your character in the first game used to beat Ryan to death. Pick it up with your telekinesis and use it to knock off the mandroid’s head to unlock this award.

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It’s too bad the kids couldn’t be there to see it. I’m sure they would have remembered that moment forever.

I’m not sure what more this Achievement/Trophy needs. It’s quick and easy to do, awards a ridiculously awesome action, and the icon makes me chuckle every time I look at it. Here’s an incredibly British guy to show you how it’s done:

Tuesday’s list included an Achievement from Darkest of Days that gave you 100 Gamerscore for punching a horse to death. Cabela’s Big Game Hunter Hunting Party isn’t so cruel. It just asks you to kick a bear in the face to prove your bravery, but the bear will certainly still be alive afterward. You may not be, depending on how he reacts, but at least you showed everyone how tough you were before those claws started a-raking.

Did I mention that Hunting Party is for Microsoft’s Kinect motion sensor, so you, at home, have to actually make a kicking motion to unlock this Achievement? Sorry, “Arcade Action” … I think we found your lack.

When you start a fitness program, it’s important to set goals. And if you ever get discouraged, it’s a good idea to look back at how much you’ve accomplished. That’s about the only justification I can think of for this reward, which uses a somewhat arbitrary unit of measurement to put a landmark based on a perfectly good round number into perspective. I guess the developers just really like that song.

While we’re on the subject of horned animals you don’t see every day (or any day, really), Red Dead Redemption’s “Undead Nightmare” downloadable content adds a number of mythical beasts like jackalopes, Sasquatch, and El Chupacabra. “Fan Service” rewards players who have tracked down the elusive Unicorn and made it their mount.

I’m really not sure about this one … that’s it; I’m making the call. This one’s off the li–holy crap, it’s beautiful

It’s rare that an Achievement or Trophy rewards you for not killing something. “Yankee Cow” is one such award.

In Chapter II of Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, anti-heroes Thomas and Ray investigate a strange noise coming from a barn. Assuming that their enemies await them inside, they grip their pistols, kick open the doors, and activate the obligatory slow-motion-shooting mode that every Wild West-themed video game has.

And then a bull runs out of the barn. You can shoot it or not, but, you know … it’s just a cow. It really just wanted out of there. Sparing your ammo — and, by extension, the bull — unlocks the award.

If that unfortunate business with the bunny on Tuesday didn’t tip you off, Fairytale Fights is a bit gruesome. It’s also completely adorable, so I’m kind of conflicted here. The easiest way to complete “Whoooaaa!” is to kill an enemy, spilling its blood, and then skate around in a circle until the Achievement or Trophy pops. And as if that weren’t enough, you can also unlock two other blood-related awards at the same time.

Games often ask players to examine every item they come across. Often several times. But sometimes, gamers compulsively check everything they see whether they need to or not, and that’s why “Pervert” makes sense. Like “Handle with Caution” in Metal Gear Solid 4, “Pervert” is an award that you won’t unlock unless your completionist tendencies outweigh your sense of decorum when genitals are involved.

Tropico 4 — “Kill Juanito”
Value: 15G
“Issue an Execution order on a citizen called Juanito.”

Playing as El Presidente in developer Haemimont Games’ banana-republic simulator Tropico 4 is hard work. You have to manage imports and exports, your citizens always want things, and the United Nations has a problem with one dude having absolute domain over his country. You must have some way to blow off steam.

Well, since you’re an all-powerful dictator, why not have someone killed? Maybe someone named Juanito so you can pretend that it’s the annoying DJ from the last game? Go for it, El Presidente. Here’s your Achievement.

The funniest part about this award is that if you can’t find anyone in your population named Juanito, you can just arbitrarily pick a guy out, tell him his name is Juanito now, and execute him. And it will count. That’s how powerful you are.

As we all know, poop is funny. Digital poop is even funnier than the real stuff because it doesn’t have the offensive smell and doesn’t even need to exist. Why should virtual livestock need to poop? Well, it does in developer Proper Games’ herding-based puzzle game Flock. And if your digi-cows and pseudo-sheep drop enough brown bombs, you’ll get a nice shiny Achievement or Trophy for their troubles.

Bonus weirdness: Your animals will not poo on their own. To unlock this award, you have to hover your UFO over their heads (did I mention you play as a UFO in this game? That’s actually really important) and use your spotlight to literally smoosh the crap out of them. But be careful; it is possible to push them too hard, and that will make them explode.

This is such a weird Achievement. My favorite part is that it specifies that the 50 required piles are an “aggregate total.” So don’t worry, gamers; you can spread that shit out.

If you can’t get enough metagaming humor, be sure to check out the other articles in this series:

]]>0The funniest Achievements and Trophies ever, part five: And the restBump photo-sharing app Flock finally flies over to Androidhttp://venturebeat.com/2012/12/18/flock-android/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/18/flock-android/#commentsTue, 18 Dec 2012 20:00:00 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=592486Flock, one of the simplest, most magical photo-sharing apps we've seen, is now available for a huge swath of new users.
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Flock, the stupidly simple app for dealing with group photos, has finally make its way over to the Android platform.

Basically, Flock recognizes the photos on your phone that were taken with your family and friends. Then it automagically creates a single album in the cloud and shares it with everyone in that set of pics.

It all happens in the background. All you have to do is download the app; the rest is set-it-and-forget-it simple.

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The app comes from Bump, the startup that brought you its flagship bump-phones-to-exchange-contact-info app.

“Android has been growing at unprecedented rates, and even those folks not using Android have friends and family who are, so we expect this launch to make the Flock experience better for everyone,” said Bump CEO Dave Lieb in a blog post on the news.

“As with our iOS version, we’ve taken care to make sure that Flock for Android is a great experience for people, and we’re experimenting with a few new UI ideas that are well-suited for Android.”

Here’s a demo video showing how Flock works:

The Flock team says the average active Flock user will get around 26 photos each week — pics snapped by other people, and pics that they would never have seen otherwise because they’re not being publicly shared on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, or other social services.

You can download Flock free in the Google Play store.

Bump was founded in 2008 in Chicago and is currently based in Mountain View, Calif. It’s raised roughly $20 million in venture capital to date. Flock’s competitors are few and mostly reside in the private-photo-sharing space — for example, Kicksend.

]]>0Bump photo-sharing app Flock finally flies over to AndroidWith ex-Zynga developer carrying the flag, Kixeye invades Canadahttp://venturebeat.com/2012/12/06/with-ex-zynga-developer-carrying-the-flag-kixeye-invades-canada/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/06/with-ex-zynga-developer-carrying-the-flag-kixeye-invades-canada/#commentsThu, 06 Dec 2012 15:00:00 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=585241Kixeye has also hired a general manager from Kabam.
]]>Kixeye has invaded Canada. And it has hired a former Zynga developer to lead the charge.

The San Francisco maker of social games for hardcore gamers — known best for its kick-ass recruiting video and hardcore social games like Battle Pirates –is opening an office in Victoria, British Columbia. It has also hired a former Zynga developer Clayton Stark as the general manager for Kixeye Canada. That’s not going to help relations with Zynga, which sued Kixeye and former employee Alan Patmore for trade secret theft after he joined Kixeye.

Kixeye says it is generating record revenue month over month, every month, and it expects to reach “nine digits in revenue” by year end. The new game studio is the third office for Kixeye, in addition to its expansion in Brisbane, Australia.

“Our search for top talent is not limited by international boundaries,” said Kixeye chief executive Will Harbin (pictured). “Victoria is a hotbed of technical talent, and Clayton and his team have aggressive goals to expand Kixeye Canada.”

Stark will lead the efforts set up the studio in his hometown of Victoria. He has more than two decades of experience. He served as chief operating officer at Mercurial Communications, which helped to develop and restart the 8.0 browser for Netscape, and was the chief technology officer and vice president of engineering at Flock, which created “the social browser.” Flock was acquired by Zynga in 2010, and Stark worked at Zynga as director of development.

“Victoria is exploding with engineering talent and is one of the largest tech hubs outside of Silicon Valley, especially for game companies,” said Stark. “It’s also consistently ranked among the most beautiful cities in the world, and we’re setting up Kixeye Canada right along the inner harbor at Bastion Square. For developers, it doesn’t get any better than working on projects they’re super passionate about, and having an incredible amount of fun while doing it.”

Founded in 2007, Kixeye has more than 300 employees. Meanwhile, Kixeye has hired a general manager from Kabam. Justin Lambros has signed aboard as a Kixeye employee, according to his LinkedIn profile.